Chinese Winter Solstice Festival ( Tang Yuen)

On Tuesday, we prepared glutinous rice ball or "tang yuen" for the Chinese Winter Solstice Festival. In the olden days, this festival marks the passing of the harshest part of winter. The chinese believed that the round dessert is a symbol of family unity and harmony. Oh.... and also a reminder that we are a year older even before the new year.

 The children had a lot of fun.I must mentioned that the pre-schoolers did quite a good job shaping it. Every year, we will get all the children to sit around the table and together we will make this "tang yuen". Mean while the pre-toddlers were also busy the dough; flatten, shaping and even asked to use the playdough cutter and rollers !!!!!

Once cooked we had it for our tea and we also made extra "tang yuen" for the children to take home.

                                     

                                      

                                     

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I couldn't help myself but to introduce again Eric Carle's book for our November's theme. The Very Hungry

Caterpillar is an excellent book and has won many prizes. 

This book contains not only easy-to-read words but also large and colourful illustrations. With the interesting story line I hope the children would be able to love this book as much as I do.

The first activity that we did was to decorate our theme board. We printed out sentence strips while the children painted the templates of the foods and fruits. Once done, the sentence strips and the templates of the fruits and foods were pasted on our theme board. The children were able to read the story from the board without having to read it from the book. Thus promoting language and literacy development as well as personal, social and emotional development. It was amazing to see how fast the children were able to learn  the story even the pre-toddlers. Bear in mind though that we didn't made the children sit down everyday to learn the story !!!!

I have enclosed a videoclip of a 3-year old girl who retell the story. Of course, she still stumble on the days' name but it was a job well done.

During our story sessions, we read out the story to all the children. However this time, we decided to spice up this session ( everything presented to the children have to be interesting) by presenting all the foods and fruits for the children to see, touch, smell and taste. This interesting session will promote the development of their senses and also encourage interactions and discussions on the presented materials. This promote mathematical development through counting and colours. The children enjoyed this sessions but most of all the tasting of the food and fruits.

We also sang "Days of the week" song and introduce "caterpillar" finger play during our singing sessions. Besides that we also talked about foods that are healthy and unhealthy.

We also saved some of the fruits to do fruit printing. Among other craft activities that we have done were the symmetrical painting of a butterfly and the making of caterpillar from egg box. Even though the caterpillar's diet is a fictional fantasy but the story does introduce the magic of the metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to butterfly. We also did craft on the life cycle of a caterpillar.

For our cooking sessions, we made caterpillar banana for snack. The children cut the bananas and then joined it again using chocolate spread. They then used raisins as the eye and biscuit sticks as the catrepillar's feet. They had fun making it as well as eating it.

                              

  

  

The activities that we have done covers all the six areas of learning. By end of the month, all the children were aware that butterfly babies are caterpillars and that they don't look like their mum. Since I have  already touched on this topic, I'd like to share my experience during my training as a montessori directress. My self and two other friends were required to present a dramatic play as part of our course. I chosed a book " Monkey Puzzle" by Julia Donaldson  as I thought it was a funny and interesting book and by the end of the book, we know that not all babies look like their mum. Much to a protest by my colleague, I went on with my idea and after the presentation, the audience as well as my trainer were entertained and praised our drama. It was a memory to treasure !!

Parents' Day

Yesterday was the Parents Day and it was lovely to see the parents and show the parents all the works the children have done. In Fingertips, Parent's Day are held twice a year; June and December; to allow teachers and parents to discuss the progress of their children. These are done on a one-to-one basis so that they are able to discuss their child in confidentiality. Parents are also able to see example of their child's work. But most importantly parents will have the time and opportunity to talk to each other and teachers, which they may not able to do on a daily basis.

Many thanks to all the parents who make an effort to attend our Parents Day. Those who didn't make it, please arrange for another day at your convenience to discuss about your child's progress.

                                

October's Theme

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See.

Eric Carle is one of my favourite author for childrens' book. Therefore for the month of October, I read the Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle's classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? This is a great book because it is so repetitive and children loved it. We'd read it many times and it was amazing how quickly even some very young pre-toddlers respond to and "learn" this book. Eric Carle's art is simple yet vivid and the repetition in the words is so comforting and confidence-building. The simplicity of the book makes the children able to read themselves before they can actually read words.

This book consists of nine animals character. For the development of language and literacy, the toddlers' learnt to connect to the beginning sound by using sandpaper letters to the animals from the book. This acitivity enable the children to have further practise on the letters that they have learnt during our language session. We also have all the names of the animals posted on our word wall. Here the children are free to point and read the words whenever they want.

We played "I Spy" with them too. In this game, the toddlers as well as the pre-toddlers had to name or point to the things that we asked for. Here we played "I Spy" to introduce colors. Thus promoting development in mathematical area as well as language.

We also used bear counters for mathematical development. We did counting using the bears to match the number on the number card. Here the children would be able to connect symbols and volume. Besides counting, the children did grouping on colours too. The bear figurines were grouped together in their respective colour groups. Apart from grouping, we also did sequencing.

We have mounted the animals template which was coloured by the children. These cards were placed randomly on the table. The children then took turns to sequence the order of animals used in the book.

We made honey drinks for our cooking sessions. They poured amd stirred and eventually enjoyed their drinks. This activity encourages personal, social and emotional development as well as physical and mathematical development.

Trying to get the attention of a group of toddlers is every teacher's daily challenge. Therefore we always engaged them through the senses of sound and sight during our Learning Circle sessions. By incorporating these, we are able to capture the interest of the children. Last month, we sung the Brown Bear song. As we sang, we incorporate the movements as well as the sound of the animals.

The children loved this book. We had so much fun learning and exploring number, patterns, sequencing and many more. We can't wait to explore with the children for our upcoming November's theme.

Halloween Party

Yes, it's Halloween once again and this year's celebration took place in my house. Before I brag about our party, let me introduce to you the origins of Halloween. Halloween's origin dated back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain( Celtic New Year) where Celt believed that on the night before, the boundary between the worlds of both the living and dead became blurred and allowing spirits to pass through. Thus the living disguised themselves from the harmful spirit by wearing ghoulish costumes and mask.

Well for us, this celebration is mainly to have fun and to foster closer ties with the parents and children.

The preparations and plannings for this Halloween party begun two weeks ago. Most of the decorations are made by the teachers and children. Among of the decorations were candle holder, candy holder, tissue holder, tomb and many more. Teacher Chris and Teacher Michelle were at my house as early as 10am to put up the decorations. While the rest of my staffs came in at 4.30pm to help out with the food. It was unbelieveable to see my beautiful garden has turned into a spooky and eerie garden.Skeleton and spider web were seen hanging on my beautiful lamp post, tombs were all over my garden, wall decorations such as the haunted house, scary Jack-O-Lantern and others were stick on the wall. Tiny bats were all over the walls and pillars. Lights were switched off and lots of candles were placed all over to brighten up the garden. It was certainly a frightening sight and I could hardly believed my eyes that my house has indeed turned into a haunted house.

Evening came, both parents and child dressed up in the weirdest outfits imaginable as well as cute and sexy ones. Since we did not go house-to-house trick-or-treating, we had a few interesting activities for both parents and child to spook the night away. We had the dads to dressed up as mummy with mums' help and also building scarecrow by parents. I must say that they made an excellent job and very creative indeed. Way to go parents !!! Meanwhile the children went for a witch hat hunt and ghost lollipop hunt.

Well this party won't be complete without food, isn't it? We were so grateful to all parents who contribute foods making this party somehow a pot luck party. We has cupcakes, jelly, pizzas, tarts, fried noodles and many more. Myself, who is always keen on cooking, made tomb-sandwiches, spider nuggets, ghost sausages and wiggly worms orange cordial. What a feast !!

As for the Halloween costume competition, we would like to congratulate Jean Cheah for winning the pre-school category and Caleb Goh in Toddlers category. Jean was dressed as a geisha ghost and Caleb as a handsome pilot.

At the end of our party, the children were presented with trick-or-treat goodie bags to take home. I hope they will all remember the night, the fun and the excitement.

Thanks, Adrian, for capturing the night for us and finally to the wonderful people who turned up for this event ( even though late-better late than never, aye!). It was indeed a bewitching bash !!!

p/s: Have you cast your vote for our Halloween coloring competition? Please do so by 15th November. Thank you.

Deepavali

Last week has been a busy week for me. As we have been busy preparing and searching for our display item on cultural table as well as our banana leaf feast to celebrate Deepavali.

These experience ( of getting the items and learning the culture of Hindus) have been very knowledgeable and useful for us, so that all the information that we passed on to the children are accurate. It is good thing that we have Little India in Penang because it is convenient to get all the items that we need, be it for decoration or food. Hence, with these frequent visits to the shops, Chris and I are becoming a regular in Little India.

We wanted to show the children things or items that are related in celebrating Deepavali. Hence, a cultural table was set-up in the corridor area. With the guidance of teacher Meena, we placed oil lamps, a few varieties of muruku, dhal, laddu,ghee ball, bangles as well as sarees on the table.

I have folded the sarees into shape of a lotus flower.These items are explained and introduced during our daily Learning Circle sessions. All these items are beautifully decorated together with the labels. In Montessori environment, every item must be attractively presented to the child. During our Learning Circle, we also tought the children to speak in Tamil for the words ' Thank you ' ( nandri ) and ' Hello ' (Vanekam).

Last year, We had children decorated their own Rangoli and oil lamp. However , this year we decided to do only one Rangoli. The Rangoli was drawn by Teacher Meena and guide us through in decorating it. I bought 5 coloured grains to fill in the Kolam. We were very excited and took turns to fill it. We were very proud at the finished Rangoli!!

We also did sticking and coloring on an oil lamp templates

On our banana leaf feast, I personally whipped up a tasty chick peas, potato and chicken curry. I made it non-spicy and it was a hit among the children and even Teacher Meena gave me a thumbs-up.Besides curry , we also served stir-fry spinach, dhal curry and of course pappadams. We served all these food on a banana leaf and without any cutlery.

They were using their hands!! It was quite hilarious to see the children tried effortlessly to eat with their hands. Most of the rice came down between their fingers and yet they didn't give up and finished up their rice. I am so proud of them! To quench down their thirst, they had mango lassi.

However, for the toddler's group, they did not have banana leaf rice. I was afraid that the curry that I cooked has strong flavor. So instead of having cereal for snack, we gave them roti canai and dhal curry. We separated the dhal curry and the roti canai just in case they didn't like it.

However most of them seems to like the curry. Just by looking at the photographs , we knew that they loved it!!

This exposure of Indian Culture is important for the children. Children not only learn new vocabulary but also an understanding of the real world. However the most important thing is the children have great fun! Lastly , we certainly look forward to our Halloween party on next Saturday.